Most fatalities in structural fires result from smoke inhalation rather than from burns. The smoke inhalation problem is particularly acute in taller buildings such as hotels and high-rise office buildings, where a serious fire on the lower floors can flood the upper floors with so much smoke that it is impossible for the building occupants to either breathe or to move through the building to an emergency exit.
Many systems have been designed to remove smoke from high-rise buildings. Such art is exemplified by U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,058,253 (Munk); 4,068,568 (Moss); and 3,817,161 (Koplon). These systems use various electrical and/or mechanical devices to monitor the smoke content of a building and to remove the smoke from the building. None of these types of systems, however, provide any emergency breathing system for the structure.
Only a few intentions have been specifically directed toward providing an emergency breathing system for permanent installation in structures such as high-rise buildings. Such inventions are quite complicated mechanically and operationally. One such invention is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,174,711 (Laing et al). Laing discloses a breathing system within a fire resistant enclosure having a heat insulating layer covered by a layer of meltable substance to provide additional heat insulation. The disadvantage of the devices typified by Laing is that they are expensive to fabricate and complicated mechanically.
All buildings, both commercial and residential, are provided with a source of potentially breathable air, which could be accessed in a time of emergency. This source of air is the soil or waste vent, which is connected to the waste disposal pipes in the building. Such vents run between the waste pipes and the atmosphere and always contain at least some air. No prior art device has either recognized this source of air or has suggested a means for accessing this source. The extremely attractive feature of using the vent pipe as an emergency source of air is that such pipes pass through all floors of the building and have tributaries passing extending thoughout each of the floors in the building. Therefore, accessing such a source requires only an opening in the building wall or ceiling.
Accordingly, it is the principal object of the present invention to utilize the soil vent system in buildings to provide a source of breathable air in an emergency.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a source of breathable air for buildings with only minor structural modification to the buildings.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide an emergency source of air within buildings in a simple and economical manner.